


I Wish that I Could be Your Wine

by MistyBeethoven



Series: "Yes, I Really Am This Pathetic!" or "How to Say I Love You With a Story" [33]
Category: Under the Influence (1986)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alcohol Withdrawal, Anger, BBW, F/M, Fights, First Time, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Insecurity, Love, Love Confessions, Love Stories, Overweight, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Self-Indulgent, Self-Insert, Spooning, Support, Weight Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-08
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 08:47:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22967173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistyBeethoven/pseuds/MistyBeethoven
Summary: I meet recovering Alcoholic Eddie Talbot one day after a meeting. We find ourselves falling in love. However, never having been in a relationship before or around an alcoholic, I struggle with feelings of not being able to properly help the man I love in his day to day struggles with surviving.
Relationships: Eddie Talbot (Under the Influence)/Me
Series: "Yes, I Really Am This Pathetic!" or "How to Say I Love You With a Story" [33]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1589944
Kudos: 3





	I Wish that I Could be Your Wine

**Author's Note:**

> My sweet Eddie Talbot. 
> 
> I really wanted to post this today because it is my Birthday and this fic means a lot to me. But, for some reason, my sister keeps going on the phone preventing me until just now. :/ We share a phone BTW. But it's still my B Day and that means I made it so yay! :D 
> 
> Speaking of sisters (and I love mine dearly, just not sure why she was using the phone when she knew I wanted to post this badly :/) I hope that your sister, Kim, is okay, Mr. Reeves. I know she's in Italy. She's in my prayers.

I met Eddie Talbot at an AA meeting. Not because I was an alcoholic but because I was walking into the room for the luncheon taking place there next. He was tall, had dark hair which was longer, in his early twenties with soft brown eyes and a nice smile. My heart did a little leap when I first saw him, not only because he was so handsome, but because he was kind looking besides that. I was attracted to him in the way that you just find yourself attracted to another human being without knowing why really: the way they look, the grace or clumsiness of their most simply preformed motions, the tone of their voice and the way that they use it.

When we collided into each other, the first words that I heard from Eddie were, "Jeez, I'm sorry."

He grabbed my elbows as if trying to steady me, not seeming to care that I was a round little fat girl that was instantly smitten with him.

"It's okay," I replied softly. "It's my fault. I...I wasn't looking where I was going."

It had been true. I rarely raised my view from off of the floor due to my severe shyness. Add to that the fact that my mind had been preoccupied with the meeting of church women I was attending and I had been an accident waiting to happen.

"It takes two to make a human collision," he commented looking down at me with an affable smile.

I blushed now wanting to say something clever but not finding anything popping up easily enough for me to actually say it. Something about insurance was trying to brew but I was far too aware of his hands on my elbows to bring it to a serving point. "I'm sorry," I finally said.

"It's okay," he said, taking his hands off of me and sticking them into the pockets of his jeans. "What's your name?"

"Erin," I replied not knowing why he was asking but happy anyway.

"Nice to meet you, Erin," he said, a hand reemerging for me to take.

I took it and gave it a gentle shake. "I take it you're not here for the United Christian Woman's Luncheon," I joked.

He looked back into the room he had just left, with all of the chairs being rearranged along with tables being brought out to ho with them. Turning back to me, he looked down into my eyes and bit his lip. I could tell that he was struggling with what he should or shouldn't say. I was about to apologize for my bad joke when he finally made his decision.

"No. My name is Eddie Talbot and I'm an alcoholic," the man I would come to love bravely confessed.

* * *

I didn't go to the Luncheon like I had planned to. I went with Eddie instead to a little Diner a few blocks away where he told me about his dad and family. It turned out that Eddie's father had been an alcoholic too and it had had quite a long lasting and negative effect on the family that loved him and could only sit by and watch him slowly drink himself to death and abuse them in his angry drunken spells along the way.

"I started to drink then too in my early teens," Eddie confessed as he stared into his coffee. It was as dark and bitter as the memories he was reliving. "I guess, it was a mixture of me imitating my old man, trying to find some common ground to get close to him again and just to make the pain go away. I sort of became his enabler."

Eddie frowned not happy with his word choice. He bitterly looked out the diner's window. "No. There was no 'sort of.' I _was_ his enabler. It was because then he wanted to be around me again. Like when we would go fishing or stuff like that when I was younger."

Staring outside at the streets where he had grown up I realized that better memories were seizing him now. But from the sadness in his eyes, I could tell that even these came out bittersweet from what had occurred afterwards. 

Slowly and softly I took his left hand, still resting on the cup's handle, and offered it a gentle squeeze. His brown eyes met my light ones and he looked shy but smiled. We sat in silence like that for a few moments and when we left the Diner it was to go and see a film together. We both chose "Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol" because we wanted to laugh and we both did.

By the end of the week we were calling our scheduled meetings dates. At the beginning of the next month, I realized that Eddie Talbot was my official boyfriend. When he introduced me to his family the following month, I knew that he considered me his girl too.

Six months from our initial meeting, Eddie took my virginity. We were in his bedroom at home while his mother and sister were away and it just kind of happened. A few touches and laughter at what we could get up to. My plump body falling on to the bed as I tried to playfully get out of his grasp and Eddie leaning over me to laugh and mockingly seize the opportunity. Then our giggles had subsided and we weren't smiling at each other anymore but looking scared and yearnful. Then his act had turned real and I welcomed the change. His hands went to explore my body as mine did the same with his and the next thing I knew I had a flash of pain as Eddie Talbot entered me, our lips locked in a kiss.

It was a clumsy, rushed first time, hurried on by the fact that we expected his family to arrive home any moment and interrupt us. But we had been too turned on to deny it and had been fighting similar urges and desires for far too long. As pain turned to pleasure, I was wriggling beneath him to try to rub some more against that part of him buried inside of me and I heard Eddie moan before I felt him shooting off inside of my clenching vagina.

We looked at each other in embarrassment and a kind of joyful relish after it was over. I held his head to my chest and stroked his long hair. I wanted to ask him if that had been better than a shot of alcohol but knew it would spoil that peaceful moment between us.

Also, I was afraid of what the answer would be.

* * *

I always knew of my lover's attraction to the addiction that had killed his father and had taken a hold of him too. The constant temptation that Eddie faced was always on my mind and I hated so much as passing a bar with him when we were together. It worked out well that I didn't drink and had no urge to. But still I could see how easily alcohol played a role in our culture, something I had previously been unaware of before falling in love with an alcoholic. 

It was featured in ads in magazines and during commercial breaks. It all seemed innocuous but I could see how Eddie would shift in his place on the sofa when one came on and would become moody after that. Beer cans left on the street, James Bond and his famous shaken and not stirred Martini, a female bull terrier presented as a male named Spuds Mackenzie...everything reminded Eddie about the substance he was trying _not_ to have.

I tried to comfort him during these times, to either get his mind off of it or just show support. Sometimes he accepted it; other times he didn't. The worst were the moments he would leave me abruptly and I would be left wondering what I had done wrong and if I had made him go off to fall off of the wagon he had done so well to stay on. 

But Eddie always stayed clean.

Maybe it was the fact that he had found his father dead and had witnessed the impact first hand of what the patriarch's alcoholism had done to his family but my brave man always kept his nose clean no matter what the temptation.

In late 1988, after Eddie's sister moved out, Eddie told me that his mother had invited me to move into the house, saying I was more than welcome to join them.

And share a room with her son.

It was evident that Mrs. Talbot had long ago suspected that Eddie and I had made our relationship physical. But she accepted me enough by then as one of the family that she didn't mind us having sex in the same house whilst she was sleeping a few doors down. I think, to be honest, she was afraid of losing Eddie. The house would seem too empty without him and she was using him for strength after her husband's death. So I moved in and things were pretty good.

Even if Eddie and I had to keep our lovemaking at a lower volume than we had at the motels we had previously frequented.

Eddie worked at the Hardware store. I worked occassionally over at a corner daycare. The stress sometimes got to my lover and these were the worst moments where he craved his poison. He'd be short and snap, hurting my feelings often. I'd cry and inwardly get mad at him but never was able to voice those thoughts. I knew he was struggling, it wasn't really my Eddie and my anger was likewise only a natural reaction. But we always made up and he'd crawl back into bed beside me after one of his disappearances, taking me into his arms and either making love to me or just holding desperately on to me. Being so chubby I made a wonderful comfort pillow.

Close to the second anniversary of his father's death, Eddie lost his temper a lot more. Both Mrs. Talbot and I noticed it.

"He'll be okay," the woman told me, patting my hand at the kitchen one morning after Eddie had stomped out to head for work. "He's a good boy."

I just looked out the door which he had slammed shut, praying that it was true.

* * *

I was too shy. I couldn't tell him everything that I wanted to despite the intimacy and familiarity of our bodies. My words often came out awkward or not even at all when I was around Eddie. I was scared to death of saying the wrong thing or in the wrong way. To see him fighting to stay sober every day and worrying I'd only wound him further...

Well I couldn't deal with that.

So one day I sat down at the desk in our bedroom and wrote down my feelings instead.

_Eddie,_

_I wish that I could be your wine. Or beer or anything else you used to turn to in order to bring you peace but only ever betrayed you. I wish that it was me that you craved when you needed comfort or something to feel better instead of walking out of the door. I'd never have hurt you like it did though. I love you._

_yours always,_

_Erin_

Afterwards, I had taped it under the passenger side of his pickup truck where he used to keep a bottle of some booze or the other he once told me. I didn't know if he would ever find it or if it would help out but at least it was there.

* * *

We got into a pretty big fight a few days later. Eddie had been in a horrible mood and started to lay in to me for some stupid thing. I was in tears and finally spat out one of the retorts that had only been kept inside of my head. I regretted it it the moment it was out. He glared at me and ran a hand through his hair.

"I need a glass of wine!" he suddenly yelled at me. "Not to have to stand here and listen to you doing it!"

He ran out the door and I followed after a moment when I had fought back from my shock. I ran after him but he was already in his pickup and pulling out of the drive by the time I reached the front steps. Crying violently as I came back inside, Mrs. Talbot tried to comfort me but I only thanked her and retreated to the room I shared with the man I was sure had gone out to drink somewhere with the friends he had abandoned when he had gotten clean.

* * *

I was lying in bed, the lights off, holding myself and still weeping by the time he came back. Which was only after about forty-five minutes had come and gone. Eddie crawled in behind me and held my large body in his arms once again. When he spoke, I was relieved to smell nothing on his breath stronger than the horseradish he'd had on his roast beef sandwich for supper.

"It was beer," he stated. "I was never rich enough to afford wine."

I'd known he had read my letter then and inhaled sharply in fear.

"But even if I did you can't be that for me, Erin," he said.

I sobbed painfully before biting my bottom lip to stifle the sound.

"You're too healthy to be," he said, squeezing me tighter so my breasts went over his arm, making me gasp. "Alcohol gets you used to it but it never loves you like you love it. It just takes and leaves you empty. But you _do_ love me and you don't deplete me; you restore me. But if my father taught me anything about human beings it is that most of us are self destructive and we'd willingly run into the arms of anything that would hurt us more than that which would heal us...Because it isn't good, it won't ever be good...but you will be. And I need you more than I will ever need it even if I forget that sometimes or don't show it."

I felt his lovely smelly lips on my neck and I squeezed his hands around my big tummy before I turned my head and tasted the horseradish on his breath instead of just smelling it.

When we parted, Eddie Talbot smiled down at me. "Sweeter than any fucking wine," he declared and took another savoured sip from my lips. 


End file.
